Residential and social hypersegregation of whites from blacks furthers a socialization process we refer to as "white habitus." "White habitus" geographically and psychologically limits whites' chances of developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities. Using data from the 1997 Survey of College Students' Social Attitudes and the 1998 Detroit Area Study on White Racial Ideology to make our case, we show that geographically, whites' segregated lifestyles psychologically leads them to develop positive views about themselves and negative views about racial others. First, we document the high levels of whites' residential and social segregation. Next, we examine how whites interpret their own self-segregation. Finally, we examine how whites' segregation shapes racial expressions, attitudes, cognitions, and even a sense of aesthetics as illustrated by whites' views on the subject of interracial marriage. 230 • Bonilla-Silva et al.

This study developed and tested a particular strategy to modify racial inequality in task groups. The strategy is suggested within an expectation states framework: If a group task is presented as one comprised of many skills that do not necessarily relate to one another, this complexity will decrease the effects of race. Thirty groups of three women, one black woman, and two white women were randomly assigned to either a condition in which the group members knew only that some people did better than others on the task (the baseline condition) or a condition in which the complexity of the task was emphasized (the incompatible complexity condition). In fact, only the descriptions of the task varied; the task was exactly the same in both conditions. Relative to the baseline condition, incompatible complexity decreased the inequality between black and white people for the time of verbal interaction and for procedural operations. The results suggest that changes in the perceived structure of the task can decrease inequality. Further, changes in inequality did not lead to decreased group effectiveness.

Through 47 interviews with 56 White parents who attend culture camps, the authors analyze race discourse and practices in transracially adoptive families. The authors document parents’ use of two discursive frames, colorblindness and race consciousness, and find that small subsamples of parents use either race consciousness or colorblindness exclusively, while the majority (66 percent) entwine the two discursive frames together. Because the sample is drawn from culture camps, which emphasize race and ethnicity, this sample begins with some degree of racial attunement. As such, the continued presence of colorblindness among the sample indicates the deep rootedness of White hegemonic logic. However, the emergence of race consciousness indicates the potential for White transracially adoptive families to engage race critically. Moreover, the analyses draw a clear line between how parents articulate racial understandings in their interviews and the ways parents report talking about race and racism with their children. These findings are directly relevant to ongoing debates about the ethics of transracial adoption and racial identity development among transracial adoptees. More generally, these findings speak to the ways Whites’ racial understandings are constrained, but not determined, by a history and biography of privilege.

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Over the past four decades, demographic trends have provoked divergent perspectives concerning the future of race and ethnic relations in the United States. Despite the important implications of these differing interpretations of the future, social scientists have given them little empirical scrutiny. In this study, we systematically investigate one of these perspectives-Bonilla-Silva et al. [Research in Political Sociology 23 (2003) 111] Latin Americanization thesis. The Latin Americanization thesis posits that the United States is moving from a two-tier, White/non-White, racial stratification system toward a three-tier one that consists of the following categories: (1) White, (2) honorary White, and (3) collective Black. In this article, we empirically test one aspect of this thesis-the idea that members of the "White," "honorary White" and "collective Black" categories will express social attitudes that reflect their status position in the newly emergent three-tier racial stratification system. We use a large nationally representative sample of non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans to assess this question. Our results lend qualified support to the Latin Americanization thesis. We conclude by considering the implications of these results for future research on contemporary racial dynamics.